Sedate and quiet the comparing lies,

Form'd but to check, delib'rate, and advise.
Self-love still stronger, as its object's nigh;
Reason's at distance, and in prospect lie:
That sees immediate good by present sense;
Reason, the future and the consequence.

Thicker than arguments temptations throng,

At best more watchful this, but that more strong.

The action of the stronger to suspend,

Reason still use, to reason still attend.

Attention, habit and experience gains;

Each strengthens reason, and self-love restrains.

Let subtle schoolmen teach these friends to fight,

More studious to divide than to unite;

And grace and virtue, sense and reason split,

With all the rash dexterity of wit.

Wits, just like fools, at war about a name,
Have full as oft no meaning, or the same.
Self-love and reason to one end aspire,

Pain their aversion, pleasure their desire;

But greedy that, its object would devour,

This taste the honey, and not wound the flow'r: Pleasure, or wrong or rightly understood,

Our greatest evil, or our greatest good.

3. Modes of self-love the passions we may call; 'Tis real good, or seeming, moves them all: But since not ev'ry good we can divide, And reason bids us for our own provide, Passions, tho' selfish, if their means be fair,

List under reason, and deserve her care;

Those that, imparted, court a nobler aim,

Exalt their kind, and take some virtue's name.

In lazy apathy let stoics boast

Their virtue fix'd; 'tis fix'd as in a frost;
Contracted all, retiring to the breast;

But strength of mind is exercise, not rest:
The rising tempest puts in act the soul,
Parts it may ravage, but preserves the whole.
On life's vast ocean diversely we sail,
Reason the card, but passion is the gale;

Nor God alone in the still calm we find,

He mounts the storm, and walks upon the wind.
Passions, like elements, tho' born to fight,

Yet, mix'd and soften'd, in his work unite:
These, 'tis enough to temper and employ;

But what composes man, can man destroy?
Suffice that reason keep to nature's road,

Subject, compound them, follow her and God.

Love, hope, and joy, fair Pleasure's smiling train,

Hate, fear, and grief, the family of Pain,

These mix'd with art, and to due bounds confin'd,

Make and maintain the balance of the mind:

The lights and shades, whose well-accorded strife, Gives all the strength and colour of our life.

Pleasures are ever in our hands or eyes; And when in act they cease, in prospect rise Present to grasp, and future still to find,

The whole employ of body and of mind.

All spread their charms, but charm not all alike;
On diff'rent senses diff'rent objects strike:
Hence diff'rent passions more or less inflame,
As strong or weak the organs of the frame;
And hence one master passion in the breast,
Like Aaron's serpent, swallows up the rest.

As man, perhaps, the moment of his breath, Receives the lurking principle of death;

The young disease, that must subdue at length,

Grows with his growth, and strengthens with

his strength:

So, cast and mingled with his very frame,
The mind's disease, its ruling passion came;

Each vital humour which should feed the whole,
Soon flows to this, in body and in soul:

Whatever warms the heart, or fills the head,

As the mind opens, and its functions spread,
Imagination plies her dang'rous art,

And pours it all upon the peccant part.

Nature its mother, habit is its nurse;

Wit, spirit, faculties, but make it worse;